


fourth of july

by chanterai



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drabble, M/M, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 20:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19117129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chanterai/pseuds/chanterai
Summary: It rains the day that Sora dies.





	fourth of july

**Author's Note:**

> written for a kh60min challenge and therefore!! short and barely edited and a little clunky but i wanted to toss it up here. also i'm sorry i keep killing/maiming sora i really do love him and promise to provide happier content asap
> 
> soundtrack: [sufjan stevens - fourth of july](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTeKpWp8Psw)

It rains the day that Sora dies.

It’s been clouded over for days, a distant rumble of thunder always humming on the horizon. A certain electricity in the air, a muted quality about colours and sounds.

And then he finally goes, and the sky cracks open like a shattered dam.

They’ve tucked themselves under a little awning, Vanitas and Ventus, shoulder-to-shoulder, close as they can be. Vanitas fumbles another cigarette into his mouth. Ventus doesn’t scold him for it.

He’s on his fourth cigarette. All he’d wanted to do was smoke, after, but he’d had to walk a full block to have one, so why not have a goddamn half dozen of them while he’s at it?

Ventus has stayed quiet, mostly. They’d collided on the street out in front of the hospital, the wind catching his umbrella and carrying it away. Vanitas hadn’t had an umbrella at all. They’d both been soaked in seconds.

Vanitas can’t find it in himself to be annoyed. His cigarettes had stayed dry anyway.

He smokes his way through the whole thing before Ventus says his name, brushes a thumb across his elbow.

“If you apologize,” Vanitas says, dropping his butt and fishing out another cigarette, “I’ll fucking punch you out.”

“Fair enough,” Ventus says. His hand stays at Vanitas’ elbow, raises goosebumps up his bare arm.

Vanitas lights his cigarette. When he holds it out absently Ventus takes it, looks at it. Shakes his head and takes a drag.

He doesn't cough. Vanitas feels absurdly proud.

“Where’re your bodyguards,” Vanitas asks, with less venom than usual at any reference of Aqua and Terra. He has to clear his throat — his voice catches and rasps and he thinks that another day, any other day, he’d throw the rest of his smokes into the gutter out of spite.

Not today, maybe.

“On their way.” Ventus shrugs, hands the cigarette back distastefully. Vanitas wonders if he would be able to taste it, if they kissed right now. “I think they’re picking up Roxas.”

Vanitas wrinkles his nose. “Your whole gang's coming, huh.”

Ventus gives him a little shake with the hand still wrapped around Vanitas’ arm. He expects to be scolded for that, too. He’s annoyed when Ventus stays quiet.

“Stop acting weird,” he mutters. He takes a long, long drag off his cigarette and Ventus squeezes his elbow.

“I’m sorry,” Ventus says, then goes sort of tense. “Not for - I meant, you know-,”

“God,” Vanitas says, lifting a hand and knuckling sharply at one eye. “God, just - this is so stupid.”

And it is stupid. It’s stupid because he’s laughing now, laughter that shakes his shoulders but comes out in raspy wheezes that sound foreign to his own ears. It hurts in his chest. He thinks about putting his cigarette out on the back of his hand, just for something else to hurt about.

It’s stupid. Everything is so fucking stupid.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Ventus pulls him closer. Until he cups the back of Vanitas’ head and tugs him in, pushes his face into his shoulder and just _holds_ him there like being held has ever helped anyone.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the cold-wet of Ven’s t-shirt turns warm-wet and salty where it presses to his lips.

It’s fucking stupid. He feels fucking stupid for crying, for laughing, for feeling _so unreasonably good_ just to be held. For feeling so goddamn comforted when really his life has split in two.

“The loss of a twin,” a hospital-sanctioned counselor had told he and Sora months ago, “is a deeply painful thing. There’s no way around that.”

And Vanitas had laughed at her then, because Sora wasn’t going to _die_. Sora was never going to die because Sora was the sun to his moon and how was he supposed to exist without him? One of them couldn’t exist without the other.

But then he did die. He’d died quiet and unafraid, so small in his hospital bed. Surrounded by machines that had kept him barely alive for weeks instead of surrounded by family like he should've been.

It’d just been Vanitas, slouched in a chair next to the bed. It's just been the two of them for years.

And Sora had apologized for that, in the end. For leaving him alone. Sora had told him that was his only regret.

Vanitas hadn’t cried. He hadn't cried when his brother’s eyes fell shut, hadn't cried when someone called time of death. Business as usual for them, cold and impersonal and sickening.

He hadn’t cried. All he’d wanted was a cigarette and so he’d left Sora’s body there and he’d gone out into the rain.

He hiccoughs into Ven’s shoulder — half a laugh, half a sob. He hadn’t been crying but the sky sort of had.

Stupid. Fucking stupid.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi @[buffmickeymouse](http://twitter.com/buffmickeymouse)!


End file.
